The End
by dangocrown
Summary: Axel is fading. He wonders if his last memory of Roxas will be of him wielding hostile keyblades, glinting in the roaring fire...


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Kingdom Hearts and its characters. But maybe, just maybe, by the manipulations of the great god of karma, Axel and I will be stuck alone in an elevator, which somehow breaks down, unable to be repaired for hours... /end Axel!fangirling/

Roxas and Axel have a non-romantic relationship, which I think deserves its own warning, so BEWARE, YAOI FANGIRLS!

_The End_

"Axel, what were you trying to do?" Axel had regained consciousness, only to feel his empty shell of a body seeping away into the dark. The Nothingness. He looked up at the blue eyes staring concernedly from above him. Blue eyes? Maybe it… but then Axel saw the brown hair, and the conglomeration of extraneous and gratuitous zippers and belts and hooks dangling jauntily.

Axel gave a weak chuckle.

"Who knows what I wanted to do…." He wondered whether his last glimpse of Roxas would be with hostile keyblades glinting under the roar of fire. He started to close his eyes, the last of the flickering flames cooling, and everything was blank.

--

Axel found himself in Twilight Town. He took a deep, sweet breath, relishing its warm sunset scent before he reluctantly exhaled it back out. It was where Axel had been born, as well as all other Nobodies. His _home_, he thought. Saix would've laughed and flipped his prissy blue hair at Axel, calling Axel pathetic for pretending to know such an emotion. But Axel could feel the word ring true in his chest, beating for his heart and singing for his soul, as though he actually had one.

Axel meandered through the familiar streets, forever colored in tones of peach and yellow.

"It's too _red _here," Roxas had commented once. Slinging a casual arm over Roxas's shoulder, Axel had given him a leery grin.

"A testament to its utter perfection!" he had replied, taking a strand of his own fire-red hair and tickling Roxas above the lips. Roxas wrinkled his nose before replying,

"In that case, I suppose red describes you quite well." Roxas had an intentionally cool expression on his face. "…if one's definition of 'perfection' is 'violence, chaos, and a breeding ground for stupidity.'"

"How well my little Roxas knows me!" Axel had pulled him in for a tight hug, only to have Roxas roll his eyes as Axel, pretending to be a longsuffering soul. But Axel had seen the corners of Roxas's mouth quirk up before Roxas had rescued his cool and indifferent façade.

Axel sighed and as his eyes swept across the Twilight Town of now. This wasn't a dream, was it? The details were sharper than any dream Axel had experienced. His footsteps called too much attention to the silence. But then, how did he end up in Twilight Town? Everything didn't make sense. He continued wandering. If this really was a dream, what had his subconscious had wanted to send him here? His pondering was cut short, as his boots suddenly stopped at the steps leading up to the clock tower. Without thinking about why, he started climbing.

Axel could not deny the shiver of emotion that passed through his entire body as he climbed the last step of the stairs. His fingers tingled painfully as he saw the view: On top of the clock tower was Roxas, the blond head lowered onto his knees. Twilight colors bathed Roxas' face, giving a tinge to his hair that could almost pass for strawberry pink. _Like a mini-Marluxia,_ Axel noted with amusement. Axel approached him from behind, holding his breath, so that Roxas wouldn't notice his presence. Roxas looked like he was still thinking, and Axel found he was content simply watching the sunset with Roxas next to him.

The young boy was wearing his Organization cloak, which seemed so much more _right_ on Roxas than the street clothes he had been wearing in Virtual Twilight Town. He still had his head down, obviously ruminating on something too deep for Axel. However, Axel's fire-crackle emotions eventually triumphed over the simple peace of the moment.

Axel came up beside Roxas and sat down. "So you finally remembered me, huh?"

Roxas gave a visible jolt, and looked at Axel in surprise. "A-Axel…"

Axel was quiet, looking at Roxas with a hint of wistfulness. The two watched the never ending sunset for a while longer, before Axel began murmuring words so softly that he wasn't sure Roxas could hear.

"…I'm glad you remember." A mischievous smirk appeared on Axel's face. "Even though I probably wasn't so nice about it in Digital Twilight. You know I didn't mean it, right?" he asked, covering his words with false notes of honey.

Roxas responded with his own playful smirk, eying Axel doubtfully. "Like you could've marred your long, lost, _best_ friend's _adorable_ face."

"You're right. I couldn't have touched that face of yours. Still, I think my chakrams would have liked getting to know you better." Axel wondered whether his "shit-eating grin" face had an off button. Probably not.

"Hey, I'm still pretty damn lethal."

"What would you have done? Bled on me? Oh Merciful Buddha, do not let such a fate fall upon my beautiful coat!" cried Axel in false histrionics. Roxas gave him the usual glare that he used whenever he lost to Axel's banter. But then Roxas's features shifted, and he seemed almost lonely.

"Axel… this is really the end of _us_, isn't it?"

Axel was struck with a pang of true regret, and true sorrow. He waited for the pangs to go away from his chest before giving Roxas a genuine smile. He wordlessly offered Roxas a sea-salt flavored popsicle. Roxas accepted it excitedly, though his mood seemed overcast by the previous question. They talked and joked, as though they were still in the Organization XIII castle, whiling away the time.

"Do you remember? When you were born and we first met. We watched the sunset from here." Axel said softly.

Roxas paused from lapping up the melting drops of ice. "Yeah… this is my home." The silence crept back, surrounding the two again. This time, Axel felt that the silence was weighing down upon him, rather than soothing him. He thought again of Roxas's words, words that were aching in sadness.

_This is really the end of us, isn't it?_

Slowly the pangs that Axel thought he had quieted came back and exacted the full force of their revenge. Axel had to look away from Roxas's face, which was getting increasingly painful to look at. His throat started to feel painfully tight, and he tried to hide the chokes threatening to emerge by taking a desperate bite of his popsicle.

"Argh—ack! It's salty!" His words came out in a strangled gasp, though it had little to do with his ice cream. Axel salvaged some level of calm before noticing that the dream, or perhaps the reality, was slipping away. Everything was fading out in a bath of brilliant white light. Roxas looked at him, the last time Axel would probably ever see his best friend's face again. "Goodbye, Axel."

Axel turned for a better look at Roxas's quickly disappearing face. He pulled the last of his coherent thought into a final sentence. "See ya, partner…."

A single tear plittered onto the ground before everything went up in a whirl of light.

--

Roxas felt jerked into consciousness. It was strange to have thoughts, to have a soul, when there was no body to accompany it. Instead, Roxas's consciousness had to duck between the gaps of Sora's mind. It was hard to maintain articulate thought here in this land of soul and sky and stars and Sora. He tried to remember what had jolted him into awakening.

"Wha…" was all Roxas managed before flashes came back to him.

Axel sitting next to him on the clock tower. A startling sunset. A goodbye. Roxas was confused. Did he dream even in his hibernation? But somehow, it had felt real. Roxas struggled to create something tangible, something to hang on to in this whirling universe. He passed glimpses of images of events that Sora was seeing. He caught clips of an Axel, who was burning. Clips of an Axel, who was dying. Roxas shook his hypothetical head.

"No… Axel…." Panic rose as the flashes began to come together: sunset. Axel. Sea salt icecream. Together, on the tower. Axel. Goodbye.

_See ya, partner..._

_--_

**Author:** OMG what a cop-out ending. Hohoho, but I am just an amateur writer, and that's what amateur writers like to do: screw with you. This entire story is a drabble gone wrong, inspired by the Axel+Roxas cutscene shown in Final Mix II, and a small part of it is taken from Axel's suicidal attack. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look for it on Youtube, because it is uber-doubleheart-AWESOME! But Axel dies... whyyyyy... D: Comfort me, fellow fangirls!


End file.
